


tell me all the things you couldn't before

by besselfcn



Category: Overwatch (Video Game)
Genre: M/M, Past Relationship(s), Post-Fall of Overwatch, Reconciliation, Sort Of
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-09-03
Updated: 2018-09-03
Packaged: 2019-07-06 11:39:13
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,483
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15885291
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/besselfcn/pseuds/besselfcn
Summary: “So,” Gabriel says, his voice this low grumble, his hands twisted around a mug of cooling coffee. “Guess we have a few things to talk about.”





	tell me all the things you couldn't before

**Author's Note:**

  * For [SectorXIIIAngel](https://archiveofourown.org/gifts?recipient=SectorXIIIAngel).



> **NOTE:** This fic is a bit more outwardly negative of a take on McReyes than other fics I've written--which I guess is an odd thing to write for a McReyes event, but messiness can be a fun part of writing a relationship too. That said, if that's not your thing I don't blame you! 
> 
> Written for Aiden, who prompted me with [this song](https://genius.com/Onerepublic-lets-hurt-tonight-lyrics).

“So,” Gabriel says, his voice this low grumble, his hands twisted around a mug of cooling coffee. “Guess we have a few things to talk about.”

Jesse coughs. The text from that morning is still burned into the backs of his eyelids-- _ My place. Meet me. If you have anything to air out. _

“Yeah,” Jesse nods, and sits. “Guess we do.”

There are, Jesse thinks, an infinite number of things to talk about. Ever since Gabriel came back--not Reaper, but  _ Gabriel _ \--things have been… odd. Complicated. He’s heard bits and pieces of what life has been like for Gabriel the last few years, the things that compelled him, the things that dragged him back to the world of the mostly-living, but little of it directly from the man himself. 

It’s not that kinda stuff that Gabriel wants to talk about now, though, he thinks. This--their meeting--is not the story of the reformation but a piece of it. 

_ About you & me _ , the second text had said. 

“I want--” Gabriel starts, and then stops, and clears his throat. “Do you want coffee?”

Jesse does his very best to bite down on a laugh. It’s so painfully domestic, the way he asks. Like someone following a damn script. 

“‘M fine,” he says. 

Gabriel nods. He takes a sip of his coffee again and furrows his brow.

Jesse sighs and looks away as he waits for the man to collect himself enough to try over again. He turns to his surroundings: noting, observing, categorizing.

Gabriel’s new house is… nice. He guesses. It’s spartan. It’s got fuck-all on the walls, minimal furniture throughout the place. Only furniture in the dining room is the table they’re sitting at, with only two chairs. He kinda wonders what Gabriel does if more than one person comes over to visit. Kinda wonders if more than one person ever does. 

“I want you to say your piece,” Gabriel says, all at once, and it catches Jesse right off guard. “Tell me… whatever it is you need to. About how everything happened… before. Or after, I guess. I just. Want you to feel heard.”

Jesse’s head feels like it might burst. 

_ Say your piece _ . Fuck. How many times had he thought about this exact moment, in those exact words? How many iterations of this has he run through in his head? Imagining what he’ll say to Reaper, to Gabriel, when he finds him? What he’d do. How he’d make him understand. 

What Gabriel would say.

What he wouldn’t.

The thoughts all fly through his head, one after the other, tripping over themselves as he stares at Gabriel--but. 

His tongue feels heavy with the weight of all the words he’s holding back.

But he looks at Gabriel and he says, “No.”

Gabriel blinks at him. Once. Twice.

“No?” he repeats, hesitant. 

“No,” Jesse says, louder, and feels it in his chest this time _. _ “No, ‘cause I know you’re doin’ this cause someone told you you ought to, didn’t they? Make peace with your past. Be repentant. That it?”

Gabriel’s lack of an answer is good enough.

“Well, this ain’t repentance,” Jesse says. “Lettin’ me read you a list of all the things you did wrong. Nah.  _ You _ tell  _ me _ what you fucked up. I ain’t doing your fucking work for you. Not anymore.”

His heart beats loud in his ears.  _ Not anymore, not anymore, not anymore _ . 

Looking at Gabriel now is like--well, it’s like how looking at Gabriel always feels. Like staring into the sun. Hurts his eyes if he gazes on him too long, so he lets his gaze slide right off and eyes the burning heat in his periphery. 

What Gabriel doesn’t say is,  _ okay _ . He doesn’t say _ , you’re right _ . He doesn’t even look back at Jesse, from what Jesse can tell. He’s staring at some spot on the wall, his jaw working heavily.

(What’s he look like, to Gabriel? Can’t be the sun. Doesn’t burn that hot.)

What Gabriel says, though, is, “I fucked up.”

Jesse doesn’t give him an inch. He stares. 

“I fucked up,” Gabriel repeats, like the words are foreign in his mouth. “With you, Jesse. More times than I can count. In, Jesus, in just about every way I could.”

“Sure did,” Jesse says, and just those two words make something crack in his chest. He holds it together with effort. 

“I… I pushed you,” he says. His eyes stare at the table. “Pushed and pulled and prodded for you to do the things I needed done, whether they were right or not. And I did it because I knew you’d listen. Because I knew…” and his voice cuts out, and he almost seems to lose his nerve, but he gathers it up with effort and stares Jesse square in the eye and he says, “because I knew you’d never been treated any better.”

The crack in his chest deepens. 

This is  _ honesty _ , he thinks. This is honesty he’s never seen before. This is what he’d thought all along but fuck, it’s another thing to hear it said out loud, not in his darkest imaginings at the bottom of a glass.

“I knew that I could use you,” Gabriel says, and he’s beginning to sound a bit like a debrief, “and that you’d let me. You didn’t have any other options. I took them away from you.”

The corners of Jesse’s eyes start to burn, and he rubs them with the heel of his palm. He can remember, clear as ever, the day he left Blackwatch--how he’d walked out with everything he owned on his back and realized he didn’t have anywhere to go or anyone to go to. 

How, even though he’d already walked away, he still felt like he lost his whole life in that explosion.

“Did a damn good job,” Jesse rasps.

“I know,” Gabriel says. “it was… the wrong thing to do. What I did. And I wasn’t sorry, then. But.”

He lets the end of the sentence linger. 

There’s a part of Jesse that thinks,  _ how sorry are you if you can’t even say it? _

There’s another part of him that thinks maybe not saying it is as honest as he’s ever been in his life. 

But it doesn’t matter, either way. Not really. It never has. That’s not--it’s nice to hear, maybe, but it’s not coming near the thing that’s been eating him for a decade and a half. 

When he looks at Gabriel now, he can feel something worming its way out of that crack widening in his chest. And Gabriel’s mouth is moving, saying something about how that’s what he wanted Jesse to know, even after all this time, even if it doesn’t make it right, but when Jesse opens his mouth all that comes out is--

“You fucked me.”

Gabriel stops dead.

“I--” he starts.

“That’s something else you did,” Jesse says. He watches Gabriel’s face take on a look of something almost like  _ terror _ , before settling into neutrality again. “I was,”  _ damn it, don’t cry,  _ “nineteen years old. And you were twice my age. My superior. And you let me follow you into your office and get on my knees for you, ‘cause I wanted to.”

HIs throat feels hot. He wants desperately to look away; he doesn’t.

“Jesse,” Gabriel starts.

Jesse sees the questions bubbling in his mind, and he shakes his head quickly. “You didn’t force nothing on me,” he says. “Didn’t feel like you did then. Don’t feel like you did now. That ain’t the point. Point is--”

What is the point? How to put it in to words? How to make Gabriel understand the weight of this thing he’s been carrying around in him ever since?

“Point is you were everything,” Jesse whispers. “The whole damn world. You were it. Wasn’t gonna be anyone like you after that. Couldn’t be. You  _ made _ me. And I--the hell was I to you, Gabriel?”

Gabriel’s whole face tightens. He doesn’t even bother answering; he knows Jesse knows. 

Tool. Weapon. Cheap fuck. Stress relief. Maybe none of those, exactly. Maybe all of them at once.

Doesn’t really matter--he was  _ less _ . 

“Twenty years later and you come and you apologize to me about  _ Blackwatch _ ,” Jesse says. “Fucking hell, Reyes.”

Something in Gabriel’s house that Jesse missed: a clock. He knows, now, because he can hear the second hand ticking. Over the sounds of their strained breathing. His heart in his ears.  _ Tick. Tick. Tick. _

“I,” Gabriel starts, and then clears his throat. “I did love you, once. I want you to know.”

And Jesse--despite himself, despite the cavern that splits open and swallows him whole-- _ laughs _ .

“ _ Once _ ,” he says, and he stands up, towers over Gabriel and stares right into the sun. “I’m tryin’ to tell you, Gabriel. I couldn’t ever  _ stop _ .”

He leaves, feeling like he’s in freefall. 


End file.
